For my younger readers:
Christmas is coming! A good time to give my books as presents to all your friends and relatives! OK, I’m not entirely serious but I have to admit that an awful lot of the presents I’ve bought for other people are books – and, of course, I’ve bought them all at my wonderful, local independent bookshop, Warwick Books, in the Market Place in Warwick – where I run my kids’ book group. If you have a local independent bookshop, do try to support it – or you won’t have it much longer – and you won’t have such an interesting choice of books to nip in and browse through! Waterstones’ books are mostly chosen centrally by a very small group of buyers – which is why you’ll have to order my Lion Hudson books (the ‘My Mum’ and ‘St Jenni’ series and ‘The Ghost in the Gallery’ rather than finding them on the shelves) as they’ve been in print for a long time which means they’re not as appealing to Waterstones’ buyers. I also suspect that because they mention God rather a lot, there’s a bit of suspicion about what I’m trying to do to your young minds! But don’t worry – I’m not trying to indoctrinate you! I am a practising Christian but one who is constantly arguing with or at least questioning God – much like Kate in the ‘My Mum’ books. So if you fancy doing a bit of questioning and thinking yourself over the Christmas period – good time to ponder spiritual matters, I think – then a ‘My Mum’ book might be a good starting point!
For my more wrinkly readers:
Apologies for last week’s effort which was long and rambling and of somewhat limited interest to those not as sold on Youth Theatre as me! More of a self-indulgent musing than a blog perhaps – but useful to me to get it out of my head and heart and on a screen in front of me! Having done it, I felt far more confident about going to what was potentially quite a difficult debriefing meeting after my performance week – which went well, as it turned out. And I stuck to my guns about encouraging absolute commitment to attend workshops in a performance term, which to my surprise I was challenged on. Apparently, one parent had complained! One! I wasn’t impressed – anyway, too much already!
This week, I’m inspired to write/rant by my church house group which I attended last night. We were looking at James Chapter 3 which some of you may know is a particularly challenging chapter for me as it’s headed ‘Taming the Tongue’, something I’m not exactly well-known for either virtually or in reality!
Anyway, we got through that bit without too much argument (mine is a very argumentative house group – suits me perfectly!). It was when we got onto the last 5 verses that things got exciting. Here we are told that ‘…if you harbour bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast about it or deny the truth. Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil. For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.’
Well, I have no real quibble with that. But one of our members, a man for whom I have great respect, did. He argued that the trouble with it was that ‘to get on in life’ we need a bit of selfish ambition and envy as a motivator. (Apologies for paraphrasing horribly.) He argued that in education, we do this with kids – we use competitiveness as a means of getting them to excel.
I was, I think pretty well behaved – this sort of argument is, for me, like a red rag to a bull. I am deeply suspicious of competitiveness in any shape or form. Some of my most unpleasant memories are of the bitchiness of girls in the competitive arena of netball or hockey. Before the game even starts, while teams are being picked, it brings out the worst in people. I have never found competition against other people to be a good motivator. I have wanted to do the best that I can do – I have, if you like, competed with myself – but the concept of competing against others, I find repellent. That seems to be about glorifying yourself at the expense of others. It looks like ‘selfish ambition’ to me and I am totally happy that James speaks out against it. For exercise, I’ll stick to swimming, walking, cycling and dancing, thanks very much!
I’m quite intrigued to consider how far this goes back for me. My parents were very much of the ‘You do the best you can and never mind anyone else’ school of thought and I know I have been heavily influenced for as long as I can remember by the Parable of the Talents (You have been given gifts by God and it’s up to you to make the most of them). I was not brought up in a conventional Christian family but somewhere along the way I imbibed the idea that co-operation rather than competition is the Christian way to relate to other people. I was, therefore, quite shocked to come up against a direct challenge in my house group. It’s one of those areas where I’ve assumed a more general agreement than exists.
If I try to be a bit more self-aware for a moment and look back, one of the reasons I chose not to send my children to school and educate them at home was because I couldn’t bear the competitiveness that came with having children. Whose baby would roll first, sit first, crawl first, walk first, speak first, be out of nappies first etc etc? School would mean more and worse – who’s child would read first? And ever on! I could see myself being dragged into a horrible way of being that I absolutely wanted to avoid. With fellow-home-edders, we organised non-competitive sports days and ran co-operative games workshops. When I started teaching drama, I avoided any warm-up games that were competitive and any that involved kids being ‘out’. I still do! And how do I organise my youth theatre companies? Do we audition? No, we don’t! We are as inclusive as we possibly can be. And do children achieve? Yes, of course they do! Not because they are in competition with others but because they are having fun and enjoying the learning for its own sake.
Now is this what my Christian friends do? No, of course not! They send their kids to school and sign them up for the local football club! Doh! So what I do or rather the philosophy that it springs from isn’t accepted mainstream Christianity. I can see why. You can read ‘selfish ambition’ and not read that as ‘competition’. We all know there are inspiring Christian sports men and women. But somehow, I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea. If there are winners, then there are losers – and really I don’t want anybody to experience the pain of losing. That doesn’t seem to be peace-loving, considerate, full of mercy or impartial! I even feel uncomfortable with the fact that some of my books get published when so many other people’s don’t.
In the mix last night we also threw ‘getting on’ in the work-place. How would a Christian who was ‘peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere’ do in business? Another member of our group very perceptively asked ‘Do you think Jesus ran his business along those lines?’ The answer, I think, has to be ‘Yes, he did – and that was one reason he got crucified.’ So how would a Christian contestant do on ‘The Apprentice’? Well, if they’re following James’ words, they’d get crucified too. And that’s the really difficult bit. We have to acknowledge that by accepting this teaching, by spurning a competitive approach and being co-operators, mercy givers and peace-makers, we will not necessarily be winners. We may not ‘get on’ in life to the same extent as those who embrace selfish ambition. We may (and many of us do!), find ourselves working in low-paid ‘caring’ or ‘people’ professions. We may find ourselves the victims of the more ruthless and more worldly.
Once we’re talking winners and losers, we move into another whole arena. What is war but another ghastly form of competition, a complete breakdown of co-operation? I know, of course, that Christians disagree on the validity of making war – but I have never quite been able to see why. Read passages such as James 3 17-18 and it seems to me that war defenders haven’t a leg to stand on. ‘Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness.’ Clear enough?
It seems to me that those who argue that we must embrace the world’s competitiveness alongside our Christianity or we will not ‘get on’, that in certain circumstances we must make war to stop some tyrant or other, continually prevent us from seeing whether the approach advocated by James would really work. Ethical businesses are not (if we use a competitive metaphor!) allowed to play on a level playing field and war defenders rant about innocent victims of tyranny and are remarkably silent about the far greater numbers of innocent victims of war.
By following Jesus we need to accept that in very significant ways we are choosing to be losers – we are signing up for pain – or we are given the way the world works at the moment! We may even be choosing the biggest loss of all. We may be called upon to be martyrs. But perhaps that is a better than end than being a murderer. It’s the one that Jesus chose, after all.
PS. If this doesn’t get you arguing with me, then I despair!!! Come on, all you sports players!
Wednesday 19 December 2007
Thursday 13 December 2007
Meg muses about Youth Theatre
For my younger readers:
Many people think that writers spend all their time slaving over a hot computer! Well, as you may have realised from my web-site, I don’t! In fact, I spend remarkably little time actually writing books. One of the other things I do is teaching youth theatre in the Mill Arts Centre, something I love. I run four companies, 5-7s, 8-11s (two companies) and 12-14s. There’s also a 14+ group but I don’t run that – I should think they’ve had enough of me by then!
We don’t ‘do plays’ as such – we devise our own material, a process I find very difficult to explain but it’s a lot of fun. If you want to know more, read my blog for wrinklies below!
If you live in the Banbury area, then we have a few spaces left for next term so you’re welcome to join – but they’re going fast! If you’d like to join a different youth theatre, then contact the National Association of Youth Theatres and see if there’s one in your area. They are all unique – unlike Stagecoach which is a very different thing and very expensive compared with youth theatre. You should have enormous fun, meet some great people and develop all sorts of skills you never knew you had!
For my more wrinkly readers:
Last week was performance week for me. All my four youth theatre companies were showcasing the plays they had created in their workshops this term, along with the various dance and other arts groups which train at The Mill Arts Centre in Banbury. A friend asked me ‘what we had done’. I found it incredibly hard and frustrating to try to explain briefly – a nerve had been touched – suddenly I wanted the whole world to know about the wonder of devising theatre with young people. So I decided it would be the subject of this week’s blog.
I first got involved in youth theatre almost by accident. I’d had to teach drama when I was teaching English – it just goes with the territory – and then, when I was home-educating, I started a home-edders drama group. When a job running the youth theatre group at The Mill for just two hours a week came up, I applied, feeling that I wasn’t properly qualified at all. No one else applied so I got the job – and promptly regretted it. I had a group of, I think 3 very disenchanted children to which I added my 2 daughters. One girl in particular sneered at or tried to undermine everything we did. It was very evident that she was only there because she fancied one of the boys. After a term of struggling with her, I refused to allow her to re-enrol – the only time I have ever had to do that – and from there we have gone from strength to strength. Four years ago a did an MA in Theatre and Drama Education, realising that this was an area I loved working in and that, for my own self-confidence, I needed to get qualified. It was a wonderful experience. There are now around 60 young people involved in 4 different companies and it looks like I might well start a second Minis company in the New Year, for 5-7 year olds. So what is it that I do and why do I feel so passionate about it?
I very quickly decided that for performances, we would devise and we would take a very physical approach. There were several reasons for this:
We were only being offered brief slots of about 20 minutes in the Showcases of youth arts, twice a year.
We have no budget for set or props and we get about half an hour per group with the technician before each run of performances!
Trying to find a play that would suit my clientele twice a year seemed like too much of a mission – now I’d be looking for 8!
I had only recently discovered the concepts of devising and physical theatre and I was very excited by both.
Most importantly, if you devise, you can, if you choose to, keep your whole group busy and having fun for almost 100% of the time. You can choose to have very little hanging around time which is crucial when you’re working with kids who, in most cases, have already done a day at school and may not have had time for tea. The last thing you want is them getting disgruntled because they’re bored!
I quickly found there were other advantages in this way of working too:
You can allow kids to choose how much involvement to have. They can speak or not speak, they can have bigger, key roles or hide away in the ensemble all the time. Obviously, this doesn’t always work out to everyone’s satisfaction but the potential is there, much more than if you are working from a script.
You use the kids’ own words to a large extent which gradually get honed over the weeks into something precise that they have learnt – but they don’t always have to say exactly the same thing and it rarely gets written down – so you avoid kids becoming very stilted and it isn’t necessary for company members to be able to read.
The companies are quite unusual in being about equally popular with boys and girls. I put this down to the hectic, physical, hardly-time-to-draw breath approach to a lot of what we do!
But I still haven’t described exactly what it is we do or what’s so wonderful about it! Well, here’s an attempt.
I take a bunch of 16 random kids (the maximum size I can work with in the space). There are no auditions - if you join the company, you perform. And I take a story or a theme – there’s some negotiation on this but not a lot. We may do some initial improvisation to flag up key points - but often we don't because time isn't on our side - basically we have 20 or so hours (or 10 for 5-7s) to get a show created during a performance term. I work out what scenes we need if it's a story - if it's a theme, it can be more open-ended. Then we set to and create the scenes - and that's where it gets really difficult to explain! Sometimes it's a case of working in groups to create parts of a scene which are then spliced together. Sometimes I'll create a script - very short speeches so everyone who wants a line can have one or more. Sometimes I'll suggest how I think a scene might go, we try it and the kids come up with massive improvements. When we're trying to decide who will have any leading roles, we'll improvise a key scene and then 'forum' it - ie. anyone who thinks they can do it in a different way can, in turn, have a go - and the scene we've used will become part of the piece. Sometimes one of the kids will just come up with something brilliant that we add in. When we've got a few scenes roughed out, we start running them together and they start getting honed down and suggestions are made for improvements and then we add more scenes and run again - and usually I panic because we're trying to do far too much in the time - and so it goes on until finally we have a pretty polished piece. And most they of the time, most of the people are on stage and busy and happy and have some ownership of what they've created. Our sets are rarely more than chairs and tables and the odd bit of cloth! We use some props (this time the youth art group made us a fantastic giant's head and tooth) and I made a puppet, but a large part of me loves our minimalist approach because drama is about the magic which happens within a space that we have defined as theatre and it is very liberating to be free of the clutter of set or any attempt at naturalism. And I love the fact that the kids can own what we have created and are, throughout the creative process, empowered to make their own contributions. And miraculously, they become an amazing team that covers for mistakes and people who are ill and affirm each other but spot what goes wrong and raise it, and most importantly, have a great deal of harmless fun. I don't know if parents understand - whether they expect something longer or more traditional or less ensemble or more naturalistic - but every time we perform, it feels like a small miracle has happened and that, for me, is the wonder of devising theatre - to take a group of people and a space and to be able to create something out of nothing. To see kids' confidence bloom and to watch even those who have come with a fixed idea of ‘acting’ become beguiled by what we do is a real joy and seems very precious. When I realise that I have inadvertently crushed someone, it is agony – but there becomes such a sense of togetherness in each company, that the members are very forgiving both of me and, on the whole, of each other. To a large extent, it’s just an extension of what children do anyway – though not enough in my view these days – and that is creative play. It's all so simple and yet in some ways so complex. I think it hits absolutely every principle I hold dear.
I used to think that what I most wanted to be was a writer. Now I’m not so sure. My hours of youth theatre are gradually increasing and I can think of ways of expanding the job. It would have to be at the expense of writing time. And which is more worthwhile? I don’t know! Your comments are very welcome! Thank you.
Many people think that writers spend all their time slaving over a hot computer! Well, as you may have realised from my web-site, I don’t! In fact, I spend remarkably little time actually writing books. One of the other things I do is teaching youth theatre in the Mill Arts Centre, something I love. I run four companies, 5-7s, 8-11s (two companies) and 12-14s. There’s also a 14+ group but I don’t run that – I should think they’ve had enough of me by then!
We don’t ‘do plays’ as such – we devise our own material, a process I find very difficult to explain but it’s a lot of fun. If you want to know more, read my blog for wrinklies below!
If you live in the Banbury area, then we have a few spaces left for next term so you’re welcome to join – but they’re going fast! If you’d like to join a different youth theatre, then contact the National Association of Youth Theatres and see if there’s one in your area. They are all unique – unlike Stagecoach which is a very different thing and very expensive compared with youth theatre. You should have enormous fun, meet some great people and develop all sorts of skills you never knew you had!
For my more wrinkly readers:
Last week was performance week for me. All my four youth theatre companies were showcasing the plays they had created in their workshops this term, along with the various dance and other arts groups which train at The Mill Arts Centre in Banbury. A friend asked me ‘what we had done’. I found it incredibly hard and frustrating to try to explain briefly – a nerve had been touched – suddenly I wanted the whole world to know about the wonder of devising theatre with young people. So I decided it would be the subject of this week’s blog.
I first got involved in youth theatre almost by accident. I’d had to teach drama when I was teaching English – it just goes with the territory – and then, when I was home-educating, I started a home-edders drama group. When a job running the youth theatre group at The Mill for just two hours a week came up, I applied, feeling that I wasn’t properly qualified at all. No one else applied so I got the job – and promptly regretted it. I had a group of, I think 3 very disenchanted children to which I added my 2 daughters. One girl in particular sneered at or tried to undermine everything we did. It was very evident that she was only there because she fancied one of the boys. After a term of struggling with her, I refused to allow her to re-enrol – the only time I have ever had to do that – and from there we have gone from strength to strength. Four years ago a did an MA in Theatre and Drama Education, realising that this was an area I loved working in and that, for my own self-confidence, I needed to get qualified. It was a wonderful experience. There are now around 60 young people involved in 4 different companies and it looks like I might well start a second Minis company in the New Year, for 5-7 year olds. So what is it that I do and why do I feel so passionate about it?
I very quickly decided that for performances, we would devise and we would take a very physical approach. There were several reasons for this:
We were only being offered brief slots of about 20 minutes in the Showcases of youth arts, twice a year.
We have no budget for set or props and we get about half an hour per group with the technician before each run of performances!
Trying to find a play that would suit my clientele twice a year seemed like too much of a mission – now I’d be looking for 8!
I had only recently discovered the concepts of devising and physical theatre and I was very excited by both.
Most importantly, if you devise, you can, if you choose to, keep your whole group busy and having fun for almost 100% of the time. You can choose to have very little hanging around time which is crucial when you’re working with kids who, in most cases, have already done a day at school and may not have had time for tea. The last thing you want is them getting disgruntled because they’re bored!
I quickly found there were other advantages in this way of working too:
You can allow kids to choose how much involvement to have. They can speak or not speak, they can have bigger, key roles or hide away in the ensemble all the time. Obviously, this doesn’t always work out to everyone’s satisfaction but the potential is there, much more than if you are working from a script.
You use the kids’ own words to a large extent which gradually get honed over the weeks into something precise that they have learnt – but they don’t always have to say exactly the same thing and it rarely gets written down – so you avoid kids becoming very stilted and it isn’t necessary for company members to be able to read.
The companies are quite unusual in being about equally popular with boys and girls. I put this down to the hectic, physical, hardly-time-to-draw breath approach to a lot of what we do!
But I still haven’t described exactly what it is we do or what’s so wonderful about it! Well, here’s an attempt.
I take a bunch of 16 random kids (the maximum size I can work with in the space). There are no auditions - if you join the company, you perform. And I take a story or a theme – there’s some negotiation on this but not a lot. We may do some initial improvisation to flag up key points - but often we don't because time isn't on our side - basically we have 20 or so hours (or 10 for 5-7s) to get a show created during a performance term. I work out what scenes we need if it's a story - if it's a theme, it can be more open-ended. Then we set to and create the scenes - and that's where it gets really difficult to explain! Sometimes it's a case of working in groups to create parts of a scene which are then spliced together. Sometimes I'll create a script - very short speeches so everyone who wants a line can have one or more. Sometimes I'll suggest how I think a scene might go, we try it and the kids come up with massive improvements. When we're trying to decide who will have any leading roles, we'll improvise a key scene and then 'forum' it - ie. anyone who thinks they can do it in a different way can, in turn, have a go - and the scene we've used will become part of the piece. Sometimes one of the kids will just come up with something brilliant that we add in. When we've got a few scenes roughed out, we start running them together and they start getting honed down and suggestions are made for improvements and then we add more scenes and run again - and usually I panic because we're trying to do far too much in the time - and so it goes on until finally we have a pretty polished piece. And most they of the time, most of the people are on stage and busy and happy and have some ownership of what they've created. Our sets are rarely more than chairs and tables and the odd bit of cloth! We use some props (this time the youth art group made us a fantastic giant's head and tooth) and I made a puppet, but a large part of me loves our minimalist approach because drama is about the magic which happens within a space that we have defined as theatre and it is very liberating to be free of the clutter of set or any attempt at naturalism. And I love the fact that the kids can own what we have created and are, throughout the creative process, empowered to make their own contributions. And miraculously, they become an amazing team that covers for mistakes and people who are ill and affirm each other but spot what goes wrong and raise it, and most importantly, have a great deal of harmless fun. I don't know if parents understand - whether they expect something longer or more traditional or less ensemble or more naturalistic - but every time we perform, it feels like a small miracle has happened and that, for me, is the wonder of devising theatre - to take a group of people and a space and to be able to create something out of nothing. To see kids' confidence bloom and to watch even those who have come with a fixed idea of ‘acting’ become beguiled by what we do is a real joy and seems very precious. When I realise that I have inadvertently crushed someone, it is agony – but there becomes such a sense of togetherness in each company, that the members are very forgiving both of me and, on the whole, of each other. To a large extent, it’s just an extension of what children do anyway – though not enough in my view these days – and that is creative play. It's all so simple and yet in some ways so complex. I think it hits absolutely every principle I hold dear.
I used to think that what I most wanted to be was a writer. Now I’m not so sure. My hours of youth theatre are gradually increasing and I can think of ways of expanding the job. It would have to be at the expense of writing time. And which is more worthwhile? I don’t know! Your comments are very welcome! Thank you.
Wednesday 5 December 2007
No blog this week - sorry!
I have to admit defeat - it's my performance week for the youth theatre companies that I run so I'm at the Arts Centre where I work every night this week and am short on time for ranting! Could rant about the challenges of working in the underfunded arts and say my bit about the impact of the Olympics and the 35% cut in funding that that's meant for the Arts Council but other people have ranted better elsewhere! But I'm beginning to feel my blood boiling or the sap rising or something just thinking about it so I shall stop now and maybe blog about it next week!
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